JADE
Sign inStart free
← all five traditions

12th – 15th century · Toledo, Bologna, Paris

Medieval Latin

The Arabic corpus translated into Latin and taught in universities. Rule-bound, argumentative, and attentive to exactly how strong a testimony is before it is allowed to decide anything.

Who wrote it down

The authors are long out of copyright. Almost every English text of them is not — a modern translation is a living work of scholarship owned by its translator. So Jade paraphrases and names the chapter, and quotes directly only where an English text is itself in the public domain. Two of the nineteen sources are.

  • Guido Bonatti

    c. 1210 – c. 1296

    Liber Astronomiae · Latin

    The medieval encyclopaedia — the Arabic material argued through by a man who was using it professionally in Italian city politics.

    paraphrase only

What each planet meant

Three answers for each: what this tradition took the planet to be, what it takes the planet to do, and what it makes of somebody born with it strongly placed. The third is the one that differs most between traditions, and the one a reading is built from.

  • Sun

    is
    The significator of the king, the father, authority, and the native’s own vitality and standing.
    does
    Confers rank, and exposes whatever cannot bear inspection.
    in a nativity
    Bonatti reads the Sun for a person’s own authority as against borrowed authority. Well placed, a life does not require permission; badly placed, effort goes into being credited rather than into the work.

  • Moon

    is
    The significator of the common people, of the body, and of anything that changes on a short cycle.
    does
    Translates light — carries the testimony of one planet to another and so joins matters that could not otherwise reach each other.
    in a nativity
    The medieval Moon mediates everything else: a strong one makes a difficult chart workable and a weak one makes a good chart hard to live inside. In this tradition it is the single most consequential placement.

  • Saturn

    is
    The greater infortune, significator of the old, the deep, the buried, and of every occupation carried on in the dark or the dirt.
    does
    Binds. It attaches a cost to time.
    in a nativity
    Bonatti’s Saturn is about retention. Unsentimentally: a strong one keeps what it builds and a weak one builds repeatedly, and the difference shows in the second half of a life rather than the first.

  • Jupiter

    is
    The greater fortune, significator of judges, clergy, and lawful increase.
    does
    Protects and multiplies, chiefly by putting you on the right side of a rule.
    in a nativity
    A question of scope — how much somebody can hold at once. Strong, they carry more than looks reasonable; strained, they take on more than they carry, and the gap is the whole of the difficulty.

  • Mars

    is
    The lesser infortune; significator of soldiers, surgeons, smiths, and every trade conducted with iron and fire.
    does
    Impels. It shortens the distance between the impulse and the act.
    in a nativity
    Read for the capacity to do the unpleasant part of a thing. Well placed, somebody finishes; badly placed, the same capacity goes into starting, repeatedly and with conviction.

  • Venus

    is
    The lesser fortune, significator of women in the older texts, of ornament, of music, and of concord.
    does
    Softens. It reduces the cost of an agreement to both parties.
    in a nativity
    Read for what somebody will compromise in order to keep. Not a criticism: the tradition is asking which arrangements a life is actually organised around, which is rarely the ones it names.

  • Mercury

    is
    The significator of scholars, merchants, scribes and messengers — and, the tradition says without embarrassment, of thieves.
    does
    Devises. It finds the route between two points, including the routes nobody intended.
    in a nativity
    Judged on speed, direction and the company it keeps. The practical claim is that a mind works at the pace of its Mercury, and that arguing with that pace is wasted effort in either direction.

No entry here for Rāhu and Ketu. The lunar nodes are central to Jyotiṣa and present in the Arabic material, and the Greek and Latin traditions have no developed doctrine of them — so Jade prints nothing rather than inventing one.